Welcome!

You are about to enter Training Room 3. Here you will learn to identify methods that help you deal with hazards in your workplace and reduce your risk of injury to an acceptable level.

control: something that reduces the incidence or severity of an incident to a safe level

Learning Objectives of Training Room 3

When you have completed the sessions of this training room, you will understand and be able to demonstrate methods for dealing with potential hazards in an agricultural area. You will focus on these areas:

• use of personal protective equipment (PPE)
• ergonomic safety procedures
• animal-handling safety practices and equipment
• emergency services available to rural areas

Estimated Required Time

• It will take you about 5–7 hours to complete this training room.

Setting Your Timeline: Determining Your Goals

The Training Room 3: Goal Setting Workplan will help you to anticipate the work that you will be responsible for in this training room. Save the workplan document and set goals for yourself regarding the timeline you plan to follow to complete the assigned work.

• On the workplan, indicate the date when you expect to submit each of the assignments.
  
  
• Submit your workplan to your teacher.
  
  
• Keep track of your completion dates and be prepared to share with your teacher your reflections about your successes and challenges in meeting your goals.

Watch and Listen

Courtesy of Claude LeBlanc and The Canadian Agricultural Safety Association

Think about which agricultural hazards you will focus on in your Health and Safety Action Plan.

This video produced by the Canadian Agricultural Safety Organization, Plan.Farm.Safety, describes the importance of agricultural safety plans developed by specific farmers for the use of three of the most dangerous hazards on Canadian farms - augers, tractors, and chemicals.

Try playing the Farm Safety Jeopardy Game to remind you of some of the many hazards you could choose to address in your Health and Safety Action Plan.

Listen to young farmers in New Zealand talk about how effective their farm safety plan is in Health and Safety Action Plan.
From the New Zealand Department of Labour

Your Task: Planning for the Use of Personal Protective Equipment on Your Worksite

To Do

1. Think about your farm worksite. Find the PPE that you would use as you work and develop a way of demonstrating to fellow workers how and when these pieces of equipment should be used.
   
   
2. Create an information piece that could be used to inform workers about the appropriate use of the PPE you have determined are important on your farm. Describe
   
   
   • the hazards that cannot be completely controlled
   • the type of PPE that can be used to protect against the hazard
   • the way in which the PPE is most effectively used to prevent injury while you and your co-workers perform the tasks on your farm
     
     
3. 
   
   
   Courtesy of Claude LeBlanc and The Canadian Agricultural Safety Association
   If you want to demonstrate your understanding of this PPE in your Health and Safety Action Plan, you can use the information piece that you created above as a part of your plan to protect workers on your worksite. Add it to your collection of materials for your plan.

Submit Your Work

Create your final information piece using such software as Microsoft Word Document, PowerPoint, Comic Life, PowerPoint Glogster, or submit a video clip, audio file or other format agreed upon by your teacher.

Ergonomics

"Ergonomics is the scientific study of people at work. The goal of ergonomics is to reduce stress and eliminate injuries and disorders associated with the overuse of muscles, bad posture, and repeated tasks. This is accomplished by designing tasks, work spaces, controls, displays, tools, lighting, and equipment to fit the employee´s physical capabilities and limitations."

From US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Websites and Interactivities

To Do

Think about the kind of lifting you do on your worksite. Try two of the activities below to help you consider how you will move and work safely to prevent injury.

© Alberta Employment and Immigration.¬†Used with permission.

Work Safe Alberta has made a series of Work Place Fun Quizzes. Choose from the quizzes that are connected to ergonomics and health and safety on the worksite (Lifting and Your Back, Fatigue and Extended Work Hours, Working Alone Safely).

You may have to enlarge the interactive to 200% or more to see it clearly.

Work Safe Alberta has made this interactive elearning activity, Backs and Bums: Applying Basic Ergonomics, to help you learn more about safe lifting and carrying techniques.

© Alberta Employment and Immigration.¬†Used with permission.

If the link doesn't work, try cutting and pasting this URL into your address bar: http://employment.alberta.ca/whs/learning/ergonomics/data/ergonomics.html

© 2005 Workers Compensation Board of British Columbia.¬†All rights reserved.

WorkSafeBC has developed a Push, Pull, Lift Calculator that suggests the maximum weight of loads depending on different scenarios. Think about your workplace and the kinds of things you do. Use this interactive tool to find out if you are working safely.

Read

Farm workers are not covered by Alberta's Occupational Health and Safety Code for working alone. Each farm must develop its own standards and procedures to ensure safety for workers who are working alone. Create a personal action plan you should follow to keep yourself safe when working alone, or describe the standards and policies for working alone on your worksite.

Read the article from Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development to find out more about how to work alone safely: Safety Up—On Working Alone

Your Task: Sharing Your Understanding of Ergonomic Practices for Health and Safety on Your Worksite

To Do—Communicate with Co-workers

1. Promote a particular ergonomic practice that will protect workers on your worksite from injury. Choose an ergonomic hazard present on your worksite and describe the ergonomic practices workers can use to reduce their risk.

2. Find a website that describes a technique or the proper use of a tool so that you have evidence to promote safe practices and controls for the hazard. What do you think is the most important thing to communicate to co-workers about working with ergonomic safety factors to control this hazard?

3. Develop a way to communicate a safety message about your concern to your co-workers. You should describe the hazard you are concerned about and the ergonomic safety practice that will protect the workers on your site. Support your claim with a reference to an appropriate website you have chosen that provides evidence for your ideas.

You could

• send an email to a co-worker or supervisor and "cc" your teacher
• develop a Hazard Assessment Checklist that could be used on your worksite
• create a safety awareness campaign that could be used to build public awareness of your concern (you might choose to create an infomercial, a poster or a bumper sticker)
• analyze and revamp, if necessary your worksite's safety protocol for your hazard
• choose a communication tool of your own that you've agreed on with your teacher

Submit your work as arranged with your teacher.

Courtesy of Claude LeBlanc and The Canadian Agricultural Safety Association

If you want to demonstrate your understanding of ergonomic practices in your Health and Safety Action Plan, you can use the communication tool you created above to help describe part of your plan to protect workers on your worksite. Add it to your collection of materials for your Health and Safety Action Plan.

 

 

 

Websites and Interactivities

To Do

1. Review the videos in Training Room 1: Session 5—Identifying Agricultural Hazards: Livestock Safety that apply to safe animal handling.

2. Choose and read two of the following articles for more information about safely handling animals on your worksite:
   

   Read the article Understanding Flight Zone and Point of Balance to Improve Handling of Cattle, Sheep, and Pigs from the website of the famous animal handler, Dr. Temple Grandin. See the video links at the bottom of the article.
   

   Read the flyer about the safe handling of swine from the Ontario Farm Animal Council. Handling Pigs: Work Smarter, Not Harder!
   
   Handling Farm Animals Safely from the Farm Safety Association covers handling of many different kinds of animals on a farm, including sheep, horses, cattle and swine. It also includes information about ensuring facility safety and use of personal protective equipment.
   
   Cattle Handling Safety in Working Facilities is an article from Oklahoma State University. It describes how various facilities on the farm should be set up to ensure handling safety for workers and farm animals.

Your Task: Sharing Your Understanding of Safe Animal Handling Practices

To Do—Design an Animal Handling Facility for your Worksite

1. Choose an animal that you work with regularly on your worksite or one that you would like to work with regularly.
   
   
2. Design an animal handling facility that your animal might experience.
   
   or analyze an animal handling facility that your animal currently experiences.
   
   Your facility could be a corral, a catch pen that leads to an alley and then to a restraint device, a milking facility, a feeding facility, a loading and transportaton facility, a stable, etc. Use the resources and information from this course and search out resourses of your own, including other Internet sites and experts at your place of work.

Be sure to design and/or analyze your facility so that safe animal handling practices and equipment are included.

Include:

• how the facility is set up:
  • size
  • structure
  • flooring
  • safety equipment in the area
  • how the animal moves in and out of the facility
  • how workers move in and out of the facility
    
    
• animal behaviour strategies you would need to use to move the animal
  
  
• equipment you would use to move the animal and an explanation of how to use it

3. Use the Animal Handling Facility Rubric to check your progress.
   
   
4. Submit your design to your teacher.

5. 
   
   
   Courtesy of Claude LeBlanc and The Canadian Agricultural Safety Association
   If you want to demonstrate your understanding of animal-handling safety in your Health and Safety Action Plan, you can use the design you created above. Include instructions about the safety practices and equipment needed to protect workers on your worksite while they are handling animals in "your" facility. Add it to your collection of materials for your Health and Safety Action Plan.

Project 3: Creating a Health and Safety Action Plan

Your Task

Courtesy of Claude LeBlanc and The Canadian Agricultural Safety Association

Your project will require you to create a tool that will be a guiding document for worker health and safety in your agricultural workplace. Each farm is unique, so your Health and Safety Action Plan should reflect the particular agricultural environment you are or will be working in.

This Health and Safety Action Plan could take the form of a series of Microsoft Word documents, a One Note book, collections of PowerPoint slides or another form of digital portfolio that you arrange with your teacher.

You should focus your Health and Safety Action Plan so that it is specific for your current agricultural worksite or a worksite that you would choose to work on. You need to clarify some of the general safety rules and procedures on your farm and then include detailed rules and procedures for the hazardous areas that are most relevent to your agricultural worksite. You should discuss your choices with your instructor.

With your Health and Safety Action Plan your learning targets will be to

• identify and demonstrate the use of the safety equipment, standards and procedures for general health and safety on your farm
• identify and demonstrate the use of the safety equipment, standards and procedures for the specific hazards on your farm
• create an emergency response strategy that your workers would follow if an accident occured

To Do

1. Choose your focus. Begin by selecting which one of the following hazard categories your Health and Safety Action Plan will focus on:
   
   
   • animal handling hazards
   • farm machinery and equipment hazards
   • fire and electricity hazards
   • farm environmental hazards (such as ladder use, confined spaces, ergonomics, natural environment)
   • workplace chemical use and storage
     
     
2. Determine some of the criteria for assessment. List and describe the top two things about your design that will make your Health and Safety Action Plan most effective in clearly communicating health and safety practices and procedures to your co-workers. These two criteria will be handed in attached to your Self-Assessment for Project 3 and used with the AGR3000 Project Rubric to assess your plan.
   
   
3. Find the information you need. Do some research to find the important equipment, standards and procedures for establishing safe working conditions in your chosen areas. Use
   
   
   • exemplars available below
   • videos, interactivities and text resources provided throughout course
   • onlline resources that you find and assess as valid and reliable
   • safety awareness materials currently available to you on your worksite
   • discussions with supervisors and fellow employees on your worksite
   • personal observations made when touring your worksite
     
     
4. Design and create. You will design and create a Health and Safety Action Plan that could be used by workers on your agricultural worksite.

Health and Safety Action Plan Components

Part 1: General Safety—Health and Safety Plan Identifiy the general everyday equipment and practices for safe work habits on your worksite (e.g., no smoking, who to report concerns to, rules about horseplay, first-aid information) Use a series of instructions, statements, questions or images to demonstrate the equipment and practices.

Part 2: Specific Hazards—Health and Safety Plan Identify Hazards: Identify the details of how each of the specific hazards you have chosen could be present on your worksite. Hazard Control: Indicate the protective equipment, standards and practices that would be important for health and safety in your work environment (in the form of checklists, questionnaires, image collections).

Part 3: What to Do in an Emergency Create an emergency response strategy for your worksite, including location of first-aid kits emergency numbers emergency addresses cell phone availability legal land descriptions (for ambulance direction) emergency response directions

5. Submit your work. You will submit a final copy of your Health and Safety Action Plan in the form that most suits you:
   
   
   • PowerPoint or other digital presentation tool of your choice
   • Word Document or One Notebook with text and images
   • Other format agreed upon by you and your teacher

Please remember to contact your teacher with questions, concerns or requests for feedback as you work on this project.

Tools

Final Submission

Submit your project Health and Safety Action Plan and your Self Assessment for Project 3 to your teacher.